Oprah is gone

OH MY GOD!!!! Oprah Winfrey is hanging it up after being the queen of daytime talk shows for twenty-five years. She has instructed bored housewives how to act and what to think for over a quarter century. Now, there is no daytime sheepdog to herd the flock.

Last week, we had a minor scare when Rev. Harold Camping predicted the world would come to an end on Saturday, May 21. Not many people believed him and nothing unusual happened, of course. But, ask most women in the U.S. and they will tell you that the passing of the ‘Oprah Show’ represents the true and authoritative ‘Apocalypse’.

“How”, they ask, “will we ever be able to carry on without Oprah explaining the obvious?” “How will we ever be able to conduct our lives without solid advice from Oprah protege, Dr. Phil, like … You don’t need a sack of hammers to skin a gopher?” “What can we watch now, that will invoke a good cry in the afternoon?”

I have a suggestion …… get a friggin’ life!!

Oprah Winfrey’s own life has not exactly been a model to emulate. She is a college dropout who had an illegitimate child at the age of 14. And, being a daytime talk show host and ‘wannabe’ actress in ‘B-movies’ all her life, she has never had any meaningful work experience. Like many other blood-suckers in public life, she is respected because she is famous, and she’s famous because she is …… well, famous.

How then, has she been able to anoint herself as America’s arbitrator of moral dilemma and guru to feeble-minded females? One might as well ask how Rev. Harold Camping became qualified to determine the exact time God would end the world, or how Osama bin Laden knew that Allah would welcome suicide bombers into Heaven, or how Bill Clinton had the power to declare that oral sex was not ‘really’ sex? How then, has she become one of the most respected people in the world? The reason invokes the ancient proverb:

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

In plain English, Oprah isn’t qualified to advise a tree squirrel, but apparently she is smarter than the average daytime TV viewer. Take, for example, an Oprah quote published in the January 2004 edition of ‘O Magazine’ :

“Let your light shine. Shine within you so it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine.”

Exactly what the hell does that mean, anyway? In the case of the Oprah faithful, the light may be shining, but I don’t believe anyone is home. ‘O Magazine’ publishes a boat-load of Oprah tripe and twaddle. Here’s another one:

“Become the change you want to see.”

I could share with you hundreds of other examples of Oprah cowplop which have been inflicted upon the American public, but I’m afraid I would hurl all over my laptop. Winfrey has successfully convinced that portion of the American public with two-digit IQ’s, that she is an ‘intellectual deep-thinker’, and she has fashioned a $223,000,000/yr. empire in doing so. TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE MILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR!!!!

I, for one, think there is equally valuable advice from other folks out there who have not earned a cent for their wisdom. Grandma Shambo, for instance, earned nothing for advising me “Don’t go near the water until you learn how to swim”. Advice easily as good as “Let your light shine.” And there are many others out there who deserve credit – and a good chunk of Oprah’s $223 million/yr. – for penning the following thought provokers:

“Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.”

“Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have their head examined.”

“No one should write their autobiography until after they are dead.”

“Flashbacks are a thing of the past.”

“Bachelorhood is no life for a single man.”

“The best treatment for insomnia is getting a good night’s sleep.”

All these pearls of wisdom make as much sense as anything that has been excreted from the face-hole of Oprah Winfrey. And, as America’s dunderheaded pea-brains watch ‘Oprah’ reruns for the next twenty-five years, I can only hope their light is shining.